


Bed of straw and down

by Kasan_Soulblade



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Adoption, Crime, Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-21
Updated: 2014-05-21
Packaged: 2018-01-25 22:41:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1665161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kasan_Soulblade/pseuds/Kasan_Soulblade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He'd not let her go yet he could not hold her close.  Still he minded her, played at benign omnipotence for a while.  The cycles of his madness were predictable, the route he lead her was a downward spiral.  </p><p>Still when he'd call she'd answer, neither quite knowing why.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bed of straw and down

**Author's Note:**

> Story intro/note,
> 
> Honestly I don’t know how far this is going to go. While its related inspirational piece Quiver leans more on the realism and gritty aspects of the batman series I wanted to make a separate story that’s more in touch with the whimsical aspects of the series.
> 
> Of course ones definition of whimsical is another’s nightmare, it is all a matter of perspective, so this is definitely not going to be a fluff read but looking back through the source material one thing I decided I wanted to do in this exercise is to show Jonathan Crane in a relationship he’s never seen canonically (and rarely fanfically either) been shown in. He’s have (or tried it always backfires to my knowledge) many a scare hench and we see the man hung up upon legacy of ideals but never a biological legacy. And while there are some rather driving canonical reasons for this out of batman’s villain gallery he seems one of the most sincere in his attempt to settle down (I’m thinking of the “study hall” and a few other scenes scattered in the series pre 52 reboot).
> 
> While this won’t be domestic heavy, or even pairing centric, it is an angle I’d like to see explored and as I can’t find any example I liked floating about in the web I thought why not.
> 
> So here we are. Hopefully all who read like let me know your thoughts as we go along as this is utterly on the fly and well… pre story jitters I guess.
> 
> Pleasant Readings,
> 
> Kasan Soulblade

 

She wasn’t beautiful or even comely.

Comparisons to the father when one was a little girl were hardly complimentary (there was ever a whisper of how uncomely a woman was to be comparable to a man), and in her case comparisons to the father might have better be labeled as candid insults.

He has her eyes, and hair, something of her mother’s nose, shortish, not snubbed, or beaky as was his though there was something of sharpness to the lot. The freckles that were spattered about her face simply were a break from his pasty norm, the sunburn from perusing childish fancy without the caring application of sunscreen was another deviant. Or might have been. None were alive who recalled how he’d responded to the sun.

There were whispers though.

Those whispers replaced nursery rhyme, were the substitute of affection for her caretakers were prompt but apathetic. It was a mercy of sorts she was blissfully unaware of the whole that the bits coagulated into.

She’d been found, abandoned but clearly tendered. The details were spotty and many held in the files of Gotham PD’s darker files .

A hide out, some woman strapped to the table, no identification, no means to identify. Not with acid eating through the body, by the time the police had arrived there was only a husk a hint of frame (quickly failing, falling upon itself) that might have been feminine for there’d been something of shape that alluded the fairer sex.

There was blood, crusted really, fouled and mixed with other things best left unidentified. Though hardly pure the samples drawn from that had confirmed the gender for some of the additives were the residue of childbirth.

As for the child, they expected another lab sample; an example made out a new born life. Some sick altar to terror.

What they found was more surprising.

A mere two rooms away from the Jane Doe was the babe, its cries had spurred them to stop investigating the body and combing the vaster emptiness of the warehouse. An abandoned office upon the old shipping docks rise, they’d found straw about the door a thread of it wrapped about the door handle. In place of desk a cradle of crates had been left. Carefully cobbled together and nailed in place for sturdiness’ sake. Every sport where wood met in an edge had been smoothed by a file, said file found propped against the wall of that room, fresh grains caught in its teeth. The inherent hardness of wood was offset by soft green down of springs finest. Soil samples about the roots would later connect grass with the petty theft of some racetrack far side of Gotham.

As if irked by the cheery hue and benign symbolism of grass, newly grown and brightest green, there’d been bits of straw liberally strewn about. Bits of feathers, down and primary were dumped on the floor, one each side the makeshift chair of purloined crates, the whole had been moved twice if the scrapes and drag marks meant anything, each trip bringing the sitter closer to the cradle. The glossy remnants of a murder were scarcely disturbed when they’d kicked down the door drawn by the squalls, thus they’d found child, murder, and piles, keeping each other a company of sorts.

She’d slept atop a blanket that hadn’t started as such. A shirt sans seams, the threading undone with utmost care, no rips or tears, the retrieved strings had been set aside. The resulting cloth had been folded then redoubled by a shirt that was twin to it in hue though more worn with age, she’d been sleeping, he’d been sorting, before the break in. The barest traces of Scarecrow were shown in a scattering of straw about the seat and the miniscule traces of venom about a raised box’s side that might have doubled as an impromptu chair arm.

They’d burned it, bedding, straw, birds, traces, worries of contamination being their excuse.

The following response, for it could be nothing else, was a note, the items within were for a Miss. Crane and the parcel was to mailed to the home of the people who’d taken the child in. There would be no excuse for error in this deliver, for upon the note was the alias the officers had given the unnamed child in tier report, the legal name they’d put her under in the system, and the would-be foster parent’s home address, the blatant “I’m watching” couldn’t have been said more bluntly. The level of attention to detail, the picture of present abode and the photos of the people who called that house home would have been unnerving if it had been anyone but the Scarecrow, that level of attention from the Scarecrow pushed matters past unnerving and into terrifying in moments flat.

The family moved twice, the third time had ended prematurely when the first place they’d planned to tour had a scattering of straw laid upon the doorstop shaped vaguely like a welcome mat.

“I thought they’d like the place…” Crooned Scarecrow to Dr. Leland, first session post capture, his fixation had made his capture almost easy for the Bat. He’d put up minimal struggle only five or so had died. “It seemed a fitting place site of a charming murder right across the street.”

The family had returned the child to Services, stating simply “it wouldn’t work out” and it hadn’t, they’d left Gotham, left county and were on the fringes of the country before they were found again, veins so filled with venom they’d almost corroded to nothing, lungs shriveled with saturation of toxin they were perpetually put on oxygen and sedatives, the would-be-parents minds were so shattered they could not speak.

Only scream, single words, one word, his name.

Ever and always.

Thus child, his, marked by him at any rate, was shuffled about, from housing to housing, her name she’d only to be inflicted again.

_Crane… Crane…. Crane…_

The allusions, the could have beens, might have beens, coagulated like a fell omen, another package, a roaming history recently delivered (and never mind the capture immediately after his gifting, he’d left his gift, that’d not been denied him) had these would be parents (the fifth of this cycle) turn apathetic and weary and worried overnight.

Thus hisses and silences replaced affection had just started to be tendered.

Nursing bruises and aches Jonathan Crane considered it such a silly thing, really, such a ruckus over a paper crane with wings threaded with straw. As for the chaos his truth bearing and the accompanying papers had kicked off, well the ignorant were loath to have that ignorance stripped from them. Their mews of pain attested that.

But mews of broken animals were nothing; he’d not have his own reared on ignorance.

Nursing burns of unanticipated exposures and spontaneous play the child nestled against softness and sought sleep. By her side something crinkled and smelled of earth and dry and paper all at once.

Undisturbed she slept on.


End file.
